Why Dan Snyder might be 'in real danger' of losing the Washington Football Team
It's no secret that fans of the NFL's Washington Football Team are not crazy about their owner Dan Snyder, whose two decades overseeing the team have produced paltry on-field results and several off-the-field issues, including, most recently, a reckoning with the team's former nickname and allegations of widespread sexual harassment within the organization. The NFL has since launched an investigation into the latter.
The thing is, it's Snyder's team, so if he is to lose ownership, the pressure will either have to come from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or a consensus among the league's other owners. Both of those pathways could happen, New York Times correspondent Mark Leibovich, who has written a book on the NFL, told The Washingtonian in an interview published Tuesday about Snyder's future.
Leibovich noted that most owners are not fond of Snyder (save for, strangely, Jerry Jones, even though he runs Washington's arch-rival Dallas Cowboys) and the "league would love an excuse to get rid of him." For years, Snyder and the team formerly-known as the Washington Redskins reeled in a good amount of money for the league, though, so it wasn't in the cards. But the recent scandals may outweigh the dollars at this point.
Additionally, Leibovich said, Goodell "seems to be going through a period of ... accentuated wokeness, which seems somewhat sincere," there are far more women who own NFL teams now, and women are "an incredibly important fan group," so the days of owners and franchises getting away with sexual harassment with minimal punishment may be a thing of the past.
Leibovich said he believes that those factors give Snyder a 50-50 chance of holding onto the team, putting him "in real danger" of being forced to sell. Read the full interview at The Washingtonian.
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